May 13th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
FoxyTunes started out as a Firefox plug-in that provides users with the ability to play their music without leaving their browser. It’s one of many similar services which may be either useful or redundant depending on how you’ve set up your computer. FoxyTunes Planet is of more interest as it’s a mashup that aggregates a diverse range of music-related services into one webpage. As they claim on their FAQ:
There are a lot of cool music sites and services out there and their number is constantly growing. The problem is that there are simply not enough hours in a day to discover, try and use all of these services. FoxyTunes Planet plans to solve this problem by integrating all the best music sites and services into one convenient place.
Type an artist’s name into the search box and by default you’re presented with:
- YouTube videos
- Lyrics from LyricWiki
- Flickr photos
- Artist info from Last.fm
- Pandora’s artist radio
- MP3s from Hypemachine
- Google links for video, blog, news and general search
- Amazon albums
Despite the awful name, Foxytunes Planet provides a much more usable interface than, say, MusicMesh. It could do with - besides a better name - tools to personalise the interface, a proper URL and even the ability to add user comments so fans could add their enthusiasm.
Links: Foxytunes Planet, MusicMesh
Related: Fan Sites RIP (Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll)
May 11th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
e-Consultancy reports that Last.fm is planning the imminent launch of a music video service. Interestingly, initial content will be provided by independent labels like Warp, NinjaTune and Mute with plans to introduce more mainstream fare in the coming months. The service will inevitably be personalised as per Last.fm’s streamed radio. They claim that file quality will be double that of YouTube.
This will likely reduce visitor figures for the recently announced Last.tv which sought to offer a similar service using Last.fm data combined with YouTube content.
Links: e-Consultancy article, Last.fm, Last.tv
May 11th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
A new service launching 14 May will supply purchasers of vinyl with 320Kbps non-DRM MP3s of their music at no extra cost. Digiwax is a new enterprise from UK-based First Word Records, suppliers to the DJ market. Every purchase of double-weight vinyl comes with access to a password-protected area to download the same music from the Digiwax’s website. It’s not clear whether this is limited to artists signed to the company or not. However, it sets a welcome example to other vendors and neatly sidesteps the irritating process of having to digitise vinyl. I’d very happily purchase more records if this service were offered more widely.
Links: Wired Gadget Lab blog, Digiwax
Via: Mediaor
May 10th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
Proposed laws in Florida and Utah intended to curb the resale of stolen goods will impact significantly upon the market for used CDs and DVDs:
The new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand merchandise for resale to apply for a permit, would be required to thumb-print CD sellers and get a copy of their state-issued identity documents, such as a driver’s license. Furthermore, stores could only issue store credit — not pay cash — in exchange for traded CDs, and then would be required to hold them for a 30-day period, before re-selling them.
The number of shops in London selling used CDs has plummeted in recent years. In the unlikely event that similar legislation were to be enacted here in the UK, it would certainly hammer home the final nail in the offline market.
Link: Billboard article
May 9th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
OnTour is a Mac™ and PC compatible widget that retrieves concert listings for your town and highlights those that match the artists in your digital music library. Search results also includes links for tickets, maps, directions, artist discography and a link to your prefered online music store where you can listen to and download tracks. OnTour works great as a music discovery tool.
Another entrant on the concert recommendation scene comes in the form of Ontour which provides a freely downloadable widget that supplies targeted information. By the looks of things it doesn’t also provide targeted ads (I swear I’ve never played an Avril Lavigne track in my life - though, come to think of it, my 9 year old daughter did talk enthusiastically about her the other day - is web 2.0 stretching its tendrils into the offline space??) Of the My Artists visible in the above screenshot, Mika, Ash and Captain (I’ve never heard of the latter) are artists entirely absent from my music library, but I have already bought myself tickets to Young Gods and would count myself as a fan of Van the Man and John Martyn so the service gets a provisional thumbs up. Time will tell if it continues to be of use.
If this service operates in the background it would be good to see a way for it to catch a user’s attention outside of the widget environment - I only very rarely use widgets on OSX. Usefully, Ontour allows users to add artists absent from their music library:
Links: Ontour
Via: Digital Music News
May 8th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
It’s time to stand and salute Carrie Underwood, for it is she who’s responsible for the first ever (iTunes) digital download to enter the US top 10. The song which I’ve not had the fortune to hear yet is apparently a cover of a Pretenders song. It guess it was never going to be the much more appropriately titled Sign ‘o’ the Times by Prince…
Link: Carrie Underwood website
Via: Gizmodo
May 8th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
May 7th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
Click for full size image version
Visualising information is a fascinating area and, as much of a fan as I am of Last.fm, the user charts tend to be a pretty uninspiring sight. Long-term users’ charts like my own also tend to be fairly static. If Last.fm were to employ the services of Lee Byron, things might be rather different:
Algorithmically generated posters based on statistical information provided by Last.fm software. Every song listened to by a particular user over an eighteen month period of time is recorded and used to create the visualization. Each colored band represents a musical artist, progressing left to right through the eighteen month span growing wider when listening was more frequent, and skinnier when it was not. The hue of the artist represents the time of the first listen for the particular user: cooler colors represent artists who have been listened to for a long period of time while warmer colors represent artists who are more recent in the user’s listening habits.
How nice to have your Last.fm personal homepage with this information presented in Flash allowing you to interact with all that data and/or project it as a gradually morphing illustration of the music you’re listening to… With at least 15 million users, Last.fm would need to do some serious hardware upgrades, but it would be music geek heaven. Following links from Lee Byron’s initial page leads to a rather lovely interactive graph of Artist Popularity Over Time (warning: Applet, which seems to only intermittently play nicely with Firefox on OSX):
Click for full size image version
Links: Lee Byron/megamu, Last.fm, Information Aesthetics
Via: Mediaor
May 4th, 2007 by musicinterfaces
May 3rd, 2007 by musicinterfaces
Is there no stopping Last.fm? Following on from recent news of partnerships with some of the top four major record labels comes news of a global chart show. All power to their elbow, though I’m not sure Channel 4 is currently a big player in radio:
The Worldwide Chart will showcase the top tracks from Last.fm’s European, Asian and US charts. The station currently has 20m active users from over 232 countries and is available in 11 languages. Channel 4 Radio DJs will also begin ‘scrobbling’ their playlists, allowing Last.fm users to track and share their selected music.
Link: New Media Exchange article, via Digg
